1. Technical Field
The invention relates to advertising using smart card media. More particularly, the invention relates to installing, playing, and displaying multimedia and Web content via smart cards in a computer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In these days of electronic advertising there are a plethora of ways to reach consumers and businesses. Advertising through media such as television, radio, print, Web pages, and pop-up windows in Web browsers are but a few. These types of media reach the consumer through centralized methods, e.g., television broadcast stations and Web servers.
When advertisers want to reach the consumer through tangible media, they resort to direct mailings or physical handouts. These type of approaches are typified by an advertiser sending a CD-ROM directly to a potential client or consumer. The CD-ROM can contain multimedia advertisements, music, even photos. The CD-ROM is also ubiquitous in trade shows where vendors hand out CD-ROMs containing the same type of multimedia product showcases or company public relations.
CD-ROMs however, have become large in comparison to other recordable media
Presently, smart cards are used primarily for facilitating financial transactions. However, because smart cards include at least a limited amount of non-volatile readable and writeable memory and may also include a programmable processor, they inherently possess a capability for use in applications other than financial transactions. Storing data into a smart card, acessing that data, and activating a smart card's processor to execute a computer program all require that the smart card be interconnected with some type of reader/terminal.
Smart card technology has made impressive advances in the past few years. The cost of manufacturing smart cards has seen dramatic decreases. Smart cards come in two flavors: a processor-based smart card and a low-cost memory smart card. The form factors of these smart cards are the size of credit cards. As noted above, one of the financial applications of the higher cost processor-based smart cards is the intelligent credit card. Credit card manufacturers have embedded the smart card technology into a credit card without changing the dimensions of the standard credit card.
The use of smart card technology beyond the financial arena has been very limited. With the cost of low-cost memory smart cards decreasing because of production costs, their usefulness in high number applications are becoming attractive.
It would be advantageous to provide a multimedia intelligent business card system that allows a vendor to install multimedia and Web-based content onto a smart card that is played or displayed on a target audience'computer. It would further be advantageous to provide a multimedia intelligent business card system that plays or displays the smart card resident multimedia and Web content on the target audience's computer without operational effort by the user.